Distributed Mind

Do you think you can handle a glimpse into my thought process? If that's too scary, turn back now...

First, let me begin by reproducing here something that I almost posted:

I just read again, for an arbitrarily large numbered time, that CNN is left-leaning. (In this case it was at least in a context where it was admitted that Fox News "leans to the right.") Now, to me, CNN feels very moderate, if not even just slightly conservative, as do most of the established entities in journalism, The New York Times and The Washington Post included. But, of course, I have something of a reputation for radical, leftist views. Now, there are people who study - and actually attempt to measure - these things, and like most things in life, the political bias of various media entities turns out to be rather complex. (And, of course, many people believe that sensationalism, not politics, is the driving force behind most television news. But that's another whole discussion, and it doesn't really deal with printed news sources quite as well.) But, it can at least apparently be studied.

For the moment, I'll leave such arguments to the professionals. In fact, I'm not especially interested in whether CNN or any other source is moderate or centrist or anything else on the right-left political spectrum. I don't find those measures to be particularly useful in this case.

I happen to remember back to 2003 when such supposedly leftist publications as The New York Times and The Washington Post published stories (and editorials, I think) that in my estimation went out of their way to argue for the presence of non-conventional weapons. Now, I've also seen stories that were more skeptical, but on the whole my impression was that these publications felt that the argument for war based on the presence of such weapons was sound. Rarely was mentioned the obvious point that it really didn't matter whether there were non-conventional weapons in Iraq or not. I'm not saying that these publications were wholly behind the invasion, but on the whole, as they have consistently done in my memory, mainstream media sources tended to go along with an administration's argument for war. (In libertarian or anarchist terms, this goes a long way toward implicating the mainstream media as essentially statist. Obviously, I'm sympathetic at least somewhat to that claim, but that's not really what I'm saying here.)

(This is independent, by the way, questions of competence of mainstream sources. This includes the practice of giving "equal time" regardless of the factuality or logic of the claims of two or at most three arbitrarily-chosen perspectives; the practice of reproducing press releases as news stories; shoddy research, especially for science stories. Again, those are all problems with much of popular mainstream media, but largely irrelevant here, especially since they don't apply to the most commonly chosen bogeymen of the large national entities.)

What I'm getting at here is... I don't care if The New York Times, The Washington Post - and whomever else to the right of The Nation that is being accused of being liberal these days - are conservative, moderate, or liberal. Whatever they are, the aren't liberal enough.

Fortunately (or, actually, in a way, unfortunately), many of these news media entities have chosen to take a more independent path, I imagine as a result of the hard times of the Bush administration. And I'm not just talking about war: questions have been raised about extraordinary rendition and torture, privacy abuses in the name of national security, and indefinite detention of suspected terrorists (including citizens like José Padilla), and I'm sure other things which escape my memory at this moment. Of course, all the while questions were also being asked about the traditional business of politics (say, Social Security reform and Medicare and taxes and health care arguments and so on) which is not something that "the press" has tended to give free passes on in the past (though, just for the record, I don't find CNN or The Times or anybody else's coverage to be particularly left-leaning on these issues, but again, my perspective is admittedly skewed). What I hope is understood by all, though I recall having seen statements suggesting it is not, is that when media sources raise such questions, they aren't exhibiting liberal bias - at least not beyond what being a news publication in a democratic society entails endemically. What they are doing is their job by any reasonable definition of journalism I can think of. Perhaps first and foremost a news publication's job is to give its readers or viewers the information they need to make decisions, but that certainly entails knowing what one's government is doing, even if, especially if, such doing is likely to raise ethical caoncerns. If ensuring that individuals, whether in this country or others, are protected from the occasional over-reaching of our government is liberal, then so be it. Let the press be liberal.

May violence, injustice, usurption, and oppression always be questioned regardless of place, time, or perpetrator.

I wrote that all out, but I knew I had made some strong statements, and I thought that I might think the better of it later. So I saved a draft and went off to do other things. And then I decided to see if I could find some specific accusations of why CNN was left-leaning. I didn't real find anything (not surprisingly). But wthin about five minutes it had occurred to me why I hadn't felt completely comfortable posting it.

So, why didn't I post it? Well, first off, it's not written all that well, but that doesn't usually stop me. This journal is as much about content as form. The real reasons are that it is (1) likely an overstatement of a claim, and (2) a claim that I don't necessarily know I back completely.

Now, for point (1) that this is an overstatement, or that is to say, somewhat "over the top": I do indeed sometimes make strong, emotive statements, on immigration for example. But for me freedom of movement and human dignity are things that I'm pretty certain are moral absolutes, so I can afford to be cavalier about those things. And while telling the truth and reporting injustices and even perhaps rational inquiry are things that I think are absolutes, the suggestion that journalism should have a certain inherent bias runs more toward a pragmatic claim in some ways, it seems to me (at least, at this moment.)

As for point (2), why am I not certain I believe the press should have a liberal bias in the sense that I presented? Well, in my argument I concerned myself largely with national security issues, where it is hard in my estimation to stick to the truth and morality without being labeled "liberal" or "leftist" (and of course that is by my measure of truth and morality, so...). But, certainly on issues that don't involve killing or dying or search warrants, that is not true. In fact in such circumstances one should be as pragmatic as possible, it would seem, which involves considering all options. And if someone's bias causes them to assume the conclusion, that's a problem. One should be, I would suggest, open to whatever is the best solution (in light, of course, of moral concerns, as always). And that will sometimes result in one being associated with being too far to the left, but also often too far to the right. That's a problem that has been often observed in the context of all moral discourse, especially in the realm of Christianity (I've seen several times statements to the effect that "being Christian" in a moral sense will sometimes entail siding with those on the left and sometimes siding with those on the right - a claim that I've seen even more often in light of much recent discussion about William Wilberforce who is somewhat hard to characterize with modern terms).

So, while perhaps my now-not-posted post might have made some relevant claims with regards to media coverage of national security issues, I don't think it really helps the discussion much in general. So what I'd like to offer instead is a more specific formulation of what I think journalism should be like. The first thing is moral. A journalist should assume that all humans have dignity, for example. Obviously in contested areas like abortion, it's not going to be as clear what that means, but the vast majority of the time it will be clear. And there's plenty of other lesser moral issues. The second thing journalism needs to be is rational. That's sort of like "objective" but that word gets abused so badly I wouldn't stand by it. Besides, that just means the reporter doesn't take sides. But if one side is obviously factually wrong, it should be said. And journalists should be free to do real actual research instead of just relying on things people tell them about things. Sometimes, these things happen. But lots of times, they don't. "Equal time" is not rational inquiry... Now, I tend to think that rationality entails pragmatism (on issues outside of morality, of course). So I'm inclined to think that reporters should be seeking the truth about political issues including what solutions are practical and efficient. Sometimes, if there is a clear side (obviously there isn't always, or else we wouldn't have "objective" journalism in the first place), that may entail a slant that appears to some conservative; doesn't bother me. Follow the trail of what's true and what makes sense, and who cares what they call you, because the people caught up in the game will always call you something, whether good or bad. So, that's more what I want to say than, "be liberal!" (You may notice here that I don't hold to traditional notions of objectivity in journalism, not strictly anyway. What I want are for reporters to use their brains, even if that means taking a side. Some issues require expert input, and some are just too complex, so a journalist shouldn't always - I don't want them to be politicians. But I also don't want them to sit back and assume that the discourse that comes off the Capitol Hill, for example, is somehow the entire body of things that needs to be said about any particular issue. How I wish that politicians were allowed to occasionally not have opinions as well, as a matter of fact.)

Incidentally, what got me started on this whole thing specifically was a post by Patrick Ruffini on Hugh Hewitt's blog (Hewitt of course being a prominent conservative blogger and personality) which makes a passing reference to CNN and Fox and their relative prespectives, as well as the reader responses to the post. I think one of the comments got more directly to the point than I did; it makes reference to sources that are "non-conservative" sources being considered "liberal" or "anti-conservative." And while that might be a slight exaggeration, some of the comments on that post (for example, one questioning Fox's conservative credentials for running a special on global warming) suggest exactly that (not that I think blog readers are strictly representative of conservatives as a whole). But, still it is a claim stronger than perhaps I want to make. As usual, I'm inclined to think that are level of discourse is just too base to really get to the essense of the issues. So, I'm going to stick with my claim for a moral and rational approach to journalism. Give me that, and I don't care about claims of bias.

(More specific examination of what moral and rational journalism looks like will have to wait for some indefinite time in the future.)